


they won't tell you about anything but beautiful things in school

by enmity



Category: Shin Megami Tensei Series, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: (???) many question marks honestly i wrote this on a whim, Alternate Universe - New Game Plus, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 14:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Her second chance at a perfect world is just within her grasp.





	they won't tell you about anything but beautiful things in school

**Author's Note:**

> idrk what this is, really... wanted to write about chiaki after thinking abt how messed up her reason was & somehow it turned into a non-freedom ending ng+ au where she somehow regains her memories & decides to play 2 win the 2nd time around. bc why wouldn't she. kinda random & scattered but i'm glad i got it out

In all respects, Chiaki is a model daughter. Her list of scholastic accomplishments is nothing to scoff at – hundreds after nineties after congratulatory messages written under her report cards in shiny dark ink, collected in her desk’s bottom drawer – and when she turns away a classmates’ innocent offer to take her to the shopping district or crushes underfoot a foolish boy’s attempt to catch her attention with a cold gaze and a decisive shake of her head, the excuse of a tutoring session waiting for her at home ready on her lips, let it be known it is not done out of the begrudging respect of an overbearing parent’s well-meaning wish. As easy it is to assume otherwise – from the ice-cold deliberation with which she chooses her words, the exceeding poise beneath every one of her disinterested gestures, the rumors and invectives swirling around her uncaring back – if there’s anyone at all to blame for placing undue expectations upon the girl, then Chiaki would be the first to admit that person would be herself.

She is, after all, a severe person. She has always been.

Severity, like ingenuity and grace and ruthlessness, comes easily to her. And it not the flimsy hope of keeping up with the strong that drives Chiaki to succeed, but rather – it is the knowledge that she already _is_. That she is already far stronger and smarter than all the people clamoring for her time of day ( _for the moment she breaks_ , she corrects grimly), far more rightfully deserving of life than the scum loitering the streets she walks on, the beggars and purposeless sitting by the asphalt looking on with vacant eyes as though their disgraceful existence was the only currency they had to offer.

All she has to do is prove it.

Chiaki grits her teeth, and continues walking. _Disgusting_ , she thinks, bile rising up her throat, and clutches her bag more tightly, but still she doesn’t look away. The city smells of smoke and oil, of impurity, and when she comes home and upstairs into her room that day with watery eyes and a white-hot tension twisting knots inside her chest, a vibrant righteous fury burning within her at the state of the world and all the worthless things in it, she decides she’s had enough of pretending the feeling isn’t something she recognizes with painful clarity.

She sits up on her bed, clutches her right arm with her left hand, and when her thumb presses hard against the skin where her pulse races beneath, she thinks she can almost remember.

 _No,_ Chiaki corrects. Not almost.

That wasn’t a dream.

Her cellphone beeps from under her comforter. Naoki. _We’re visiting Ms. Takao at the hospital tomorrow morning, right? Just thought I’d check with you in ca—_ She scrolls past the rest of the message, her head throbbing. The hospital, she thinks, memories swirling in her mind of a bright flash and Sakahagi’s blade slicing a merciless divide across her shoulder, the pain only numbed by anger: anger at how she let a mud doll best _her_ , how weak her human body really was. The hospital, she thinks with desperate urgency. That’s where it all started.

She has to go back to the hospital. She has to get _there_ before he did.

Her second chance at a perfect world is just within her grasp.

Naoki, as she remembers, is late to their appointment. Isamu arrives in the waiting room to the sight of her seated across one of the couches, flipping idly through an article talking ominously of mysterious riots and world-ending conspiracies. When he calls her name, that repulsive shit-eating excuse of a smile spreading on his face, Chiaki nods cordially, and meets his eyes. The memory of Baal Avatar striking down his pathetic Reason resurfaces in her mind’s eye, his incredulous gasp clear as day through the murky haze, and she smiles.

“Good morning,” she says.

“Whoa, don’t scare me like that,” Isamu says, laughing nervously. “I always knew you were weird, but what’s gotten into you today? You _never_ smile at me. You don’t want me to get the wrong idea, do you?”

Chiaki can only sigh. She closes the magazine on her lap. Isamu stares, looking unconvinced, but, then again, it’s not as if _his_ opinion’s ever mattered to her, anyway.

“My apologies,” she says, and her smile broadens to conceal her fangs, “I just had a strange dream last night, that’s all.”

(It was Naoki’s hand she died to, after all.)


End file.
